athy
for which you pardon me, perhaps, reflecting that it is not egotistic
but is addressed only to a shadow,--the little fellow who crossed the
Luxembourg garden, hopping like a sparrow,--became later an
enthusiastic humanist.

I studied Homer. I saw Thetis rise like a white mist over the sea, I
saw Nausicaa and her companions, and the palm-tree of Delos, and the
sky, and the earth, and the sea, and the tearful smile of Andromache.
I comprehended, I felt. For six months I lived in the Odyssey. This
was the cause of numerous punishments: but what to me were _pensums_?
I was with Ulysses on his violet sea. Alcestis and Antigone gave me
more noble dreams than ever child had before. With my head swallowed
up in the dictionary on my ink-stained desk, I saw divine
forms,--ivory arms falling on white tunics,--and heard voices sweeter
than the sweetest music, lamenting harmoniously.

This again cost me fresh punishments. They were just; I was "busying"
myself "with things foreign to the class." Alas! the habit remains
with me still. In whatever class in life I am put for the rest of my
days, I fear yet, old as I am, to encounter again the reproach of my
old professor: "Monsieur Pierre Nozierre, you busy yourself with
things foreign to the class."

* * * * *

But the evening falls over the plane-trees of the Luxembourg, and the
little phantom which I have evoked disappears in the shadow. Adieu!
little "me" whom I have lost, whom I should forever regret, had I not
found thee again, beautified, in my son!

Translated for 'A Library of the World's Best Literature.'

FROM 'THE GARDEN OF EPICURUS'

Irony and pity are two good counselors: the one, who smiles, makes
life amiable; the other, who weeps, makes it sacred. The Irony that I
invoke is not cruel. She mocks neither love nor beauty. She is gentle
and benevolent. Her smile calms anger, and it is she who teaches us to
laugh at fools and sinners whom, but for her, we might be weak enough
to hate.

ST. FRANCIS D'ASSISI

(1182-1226)

BY MAURICE FRANCIS EGAN

Francis d'Assisi was at first called Francis Bernardone. His father
Pietro was a merchant of Assisi, much given to the pomps and vanities
of the world, a lover of France and of everything French. It was after
a visit to France in 1182 that, rejoining his beloved wife Pica in the
vale of Umbria, he found that God had given to him a little son. Pica
called th